Organizational Behavior Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Central Role of People in Organizations

• Organizational behavior focuses on the value of people to organizational success, competitive advantage, and healthy workplaces.
• High-performance work practices, such as incentives, selective hiring, extensive training, and decentralized decision-making, improve organizational performance by:
  • Providing employees with critical KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities).
  • Increasing motivation to perform tasks.
  • Improving social dynamics within organizations.
• Empirical research shows these practices increase growth, productivity, and retention by 15% or more. Human resource planning alone can boost financial performance by 20%.
• The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm highlights that organizations differ in resources, with human capital being a key competitive advantage. Rare, hard-to-imitate human capital without readily available substitutes is valuable.
• Three critical person-related outcomes in organizational behavior are performance, engagement, and healthy workplaces.
  • These are considered dependent variables, while factors affecting them are independent variables.
• Individual job performance has two components:
  • Task performance: effectively fulfilling essential job duties.
  • Contextual performance (Organizational Citizenship Behaviors): employee behaviors that enhance organizational effectiveness but aren't core job tasks (e.g., volunteering, helping coworkers).
• Task performance is measured by effectiveness (results achieved) versus efficiency (resources used to achieve results).
• Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs) encompass going above and beyond job duties, including volunteering, helping coworkers, and following organizational rules. These behaviors are linked to individual task performance, department performance, and organizational productivity/profitability
• Types of OCBs include altruism (helping others), civic virtue (responsible participation), conscientiousness (going beyond expectations), courtesy (communicating effectively), and sportsmanship (being a good sport).
• Five key processes for team success are confidence (belief in abilities), cooperation (quality information exchange), coordination (integrating efforts), cohesion (shared commitment), and conflict management (handling friction).
• Work engagement depends on understanding work attitudes, which are evaluations of one's job (feelings, beliefs, attachment). Job characteristics, leadership styles, and work relationships impact work attitudes.
• Healthy workplaces are crucial, with 90% of organizations with 50+ employees having programs to promote healthy lifestyles.
• Socially and environmentally responsible firms financially outperform others and use balanced scorecards that reflect the contributions of employees.
• Counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) are intentional behaviors that harm the organization (e.g., serious crimes, sexual harassment, theft, fraud, lying, bullying). Examples include:
  • Production-oriented (purposeful failure to perform tasks)
  • Politically oriented (actions undermining others' success)
  • Property-oriented (destruction/theft of organizational property)
  • Personally-oriented (acts directly harming others).
• Workplace incivility, a form of CWB, involves low-intensity, ambiguous behaviors intending harm (e.g., rudeness, teasing). Incivility costs firms approximately $14,000 annually per employee.
  • Workplace Incivility may cause:
    • Reduced emotional/psychological well-being
    • Lower productivity
• Strategies for managing workplace incivility include self-reflection, avoiding escalation, managerial understanding/education, prioritizing personal resources.
• Organizational withdrawal behaviors are actions employees take to avoid or leave the work situation (psychological/physical). Turnover (voluntary or involuntary) negatively impacts organizational performance (a substantial increase in turnover can reduce financial performance by up to 26%).
• The unfolding model of turnover explains the multifaceted nature of why people leave, suggesting that work-related "shocks" that accumulate over time lead people to rethink their work situations. Some shocks can trigger impulsive departures without alternative employment.
• Realistic job previews (RJPs) provide accurate and realistic depictions of job tasks to applicants (mention both positive and negative aspects). RJPs increase job acceptance and decrease turnover.
• Cyberloafing involves using the internet to avoid work or disguise non-work activities.
• Ways to retain high performers include recognizing pay equity (not just pay level) overpay, promoting strong boss-employee relationships, and providing challenging opportunities for skill development.